Last Year
2007 had it's highlights and some low times for me personally. On the plus side, I did get to spend a great deal of time with my children who are all developing tremendously. I also was able to take the time to get a great deal of personal software development and expand my technical skillset beyond any reasonable expectations.On the down side, I allowed myself to be pulled into entirely too many different directions and I ended up stressing out more often than I was productive.
Professionally, I made the decision to implement an exit strategy for my career as a gun-for-hire traveling software developer. That exit strategy was never fully realized, although I was able to reduce my road time dramatically. This failure was due to incomplete planning, budgeting, poor prioritization, and a failure to understand my own goals completely coupled with a lack of understanding as to what exactly really needed to happen. Now that I have had some time to reflect and to provide myself with the necessary clarity of direction I can continue down this path with confidence.
Also, on a professional level, I saw a degradation in the quality of my work. The main causes of this were too much work, not enough sleep, and poor time management - both in my personal life and in my professional world. I think the transition from two to three children this year coupled with the economic downturn played a significant role as well, but abstract excuses are still excuses and I prefer to focus on the things I can do to improve my own situation.
2008 Goals
- Money - My personal projects should exceed the revenue generated by my professional projects by mid-year.
- Growth - Traffic on my web sites should exceed the highest 2007 levels with regularity by the end of the first quarter
- Responsiveness - There will be no deprioritization of my personal projects in favor of unpaid work for my clients.
- Sleep - I will meet or exceed 5 straight hours of sleep without exception every day. How I got into the habit of pulling all nighters to meet project timelines that I neither set or caused problems with I will never know.
- KDF - The Kallestad Development Framework will be publicly released this year. It is far too important of a project to get back-burnered any further
- Control - 2007 was a very reactive year for me as opposed to a proactive year. 2008 will be different.
- Social - The first thing to go out the window in 2007 as I got swamped was my social life. Happiness is the foundation to productivity, and a healthy social life is the foundation to happiness. You can get more done in less time if you have a positive attitude and a positive outlook.
I have a goal of updating this blog every day throughout 2008. It will help me keep on track, keep my mind focused on creatives, and hopefully push me towards a more generally acceptable writing level. Too many times in 2007 I let this blog go unmanned, which killed off pretty much all of the regular visitors. Maybe by June or July this blog might even start to get interesting :).
More on things I need to do later. A) I should really get started with getting something done, and B) I have to have something to publish tomorrow :).
Mapping Out 2008 Feedback
